Authors: Andrew Klavan

Darling Clementine (22 page)

I stand up.

“No,” says Cerone.

“I won't talk to him anymore.”

I look in his eyes. Damp, worried eyes. He is, I realize, a nice man. Somewhere behind the deli counter, I hear another man murmuring, talking to God, telling him to hold on, to wait for me. Cerone considers, shakes his head: “We'll talk to him.” Then, apologetically: “Listen, Mrs. Clementine, you're the A.D.A.'s wife, you know?”

“Yes,” I say, “I know. Believe me, I know whose wife I am. And if I don't show God my face, he's going to startâhe's going to start any second.”

We are studying each otherâlooking into each other's eyesâtrying to find out everything about each other in the space of a second. But I am certain of only one thing: I have nothing more to say to God.

Then someone calls: “Captain, I think she's right. He's getting ready to blow.”

Cerone takes a deep breath. Quietly, he says: “Okay. Tell him she's coming.”

And it happens in a moment. Cerone has me by the elbow, he is marching me outsideâmothers' faces, cars, cops' faces, gunsâall are rushing past me.

“Step out in front of the blue car,” Cerone is telling me. “I'm going to count to one and grab you.”

I feel he is propelling me out thereâas if I had not demanded itâagainst my will. Don't make me go, I am thinking. We are passing one car after another, and then there is the blue car coming closer and closer and beyond it the open street before the daycare center. We are there.

“I love Arthur,” I say.

“I'll tell him,” says Cerone.

And then I step out in front of the blue car, and I am standing about twenty yards from the center and the blank-faced picture window, and I amâI feel I amâI am sure I amâeyeball to eyeball with Marcodel.

Later, the reporters will ask me what I was thinking when I stood out there. When I stood out there for that one long moment, when finally, finally, my imagination grasped what I am, what this is, this Samantha, this temporary machine, this eternal consciousness a trigger-pull away from nothing. When, finally, I knew, if he shoots me, I'll die; if a bullet the size of my thumb tears into me, I will be sod and pavement. No clarity of soul appeared in that moment to manifest its divergence from even the curling of my pubic hair; no billion cells called out their independent lives; no time proclaimed itself an illusion. Only this one moment of Samantha arose with its possibilities for every good thing. That was all. They will ask me what I was thinking, and they will already have asked me the name of my book of poems, and there will be TV cameras and everyone will be waiting to write down what I say, and the simple fact is: I will succumb. I will tell them I was thinking: I've got to do this for those kids.

I am thinking:
Here I am please don't kill me God here is my face don't kill me please God here I am don't kill me don't kill me God here's my face don't kill me â¦

And then Cerone grabs me and pulls me back behind the car.

I am, I guess, in shock. I am in a daze and my eyes feel as if they have been propped open with crowbars as Cerone marches me back past the startled gazes of the policemen crouching everywhere.

Within seconds, the bright summer sun is extinguishedâwe are in the grocery againâand I am standing in front of the phone. I stare wildly at the phone. I stare wildly at Cerone. Cerone's face and his collar are drenched with sweat.

“Lady,” he says, “you've got balls.”

“Let's not discuss it,” I say and pick up the phone.

I start to speak and then I glance down and see the pen is still in my hand. And suddenly it all breaks loose, breaks loose in its completeness, irresistible.

The phone to my ear, without saying a word, I begin scribbling on the legal pad as fast as I can.

“Captain,” someone calls, “He's not saying anything.”

“What the hell are you writing?” Cerone asks me.

Helpless, I laugh.

Someone shouts: “Captain!”

Everyoneâme includedâglances up at the front of the store. Across the street, we see two women peeking cautiously out of the day care center. Then, they step onto the sidewalk and all at once, they are followed by a swarm of toddlers in bright summer clothes. Chubby little boys and girls with inquisitive faces are everywhere and their legs are rising and falling clop-clop in a drunken march as they waddle into the sunlight. I hear the cries of women nearby, and men's shouts of thanksgiving. Then, policemen are rushing forward to drag the babies out of the line of fire. I am glad.

I continue writing:

The great beast falls

And vestal whores, their bare breasts lifted

To the holocaust skies

Extend their arms to catch

The fragments of his body's empire.

Ceremonies will begin at noon

To obscure the faded thrill

Of his falling and falling,

But still, we see:

This eye, this shattered eye

Has sprinkled on the grass,

Yet nothing is in fragments that we knew,

And where his phallus fell

There grows a naked treeâ

How we scrambled to the top like monkeys!

Brimstone vapors pluming from the gaping lips

And curling through the canyons of the ear

That lies there on its side

Have poisoned several of the parks,

And yet the phlegmatic thunders

Of the legs falling and the arms falling

And the trunk severed at last by the vaginal incisors

Falling and falling

Did not make of our lake a fire:

We still are diving there as we did once,

Naked and white and clean of hair,

Nor have we forgotten the old men's stories

Of the child who drowned in the sludge at the bottom,

Nor have we ceased our seeking him,

Skimming over the bass-woven underweeds

As we watch ourselves from the tops of the branches,

Hearing the splashing and the laughter and the cries

Carried from where we play to where we play

On the bare bosom of the old spring breezes.

It does not seem very long, and I cannot tell yet whether or not it is good. All of them seem good at first, but most of them end up buried in the drawer. At any rate, I am free of it. I am done scribbling by the time God comes outâa tall, fat man in a gray sweatshirt stained with grease. A long face with the jaw hanging open stupidly as the cops frisk and handcuff him. Sad, idiotic eyes searching for me over the top of a car, before they push him face down onto the hood.

They would not let me talk with God before they processed him, except to assure him I'd be with him later, which I did. He nodded dumbly, dazed. I don't think he knew who I was.

After the press and a lot of thankful parents blessing me, the cops drive me back to Manhattan, and I ask them to drop me off at the Plaza so I can walk home. They tell me they have been trying to reach Arthur and have finally caught up with him in Brooklyn somewhere and he is on his way which I am glad of because I figure I have a solid two hours of hysterical tears coming to me.

I walk under the canopy of trees beside Central Park, giving my purse a Lanskyesque check every now and again to make sure my poem is still in it. I have just reached the museum when I see a cab pull up in front of our apartment building and Arthur gets out. I cannot make out his face where I am, but I can tell from his gestures that he is harried and frazzledâhe is worried about me. I cup my hands to my mouth and give him a rebel yell.

Arthur turns, sees meâand runs out in front of a downtown bus, three crazed cab drivers and a stretch limo. They miss him: this is my lucky day. I am running as fast as I can past the museum toward him, already gearing up for my well-earned tears.

Then Arthur is on my side of the street and he is running toward me calling my name and I am running toward him, past the fountain, with my arms out and thenâ

Thenâwhen we are about fifteen steps away from one another, a drop of water from the fountain flies twirling into the air between us, and I see it as it catches the sun, and I feel my body wash into it and I feel Arthur's body wash into it, too, and for a second, for a second in that drop of water spinning and flashing in the sun, there is nothing at all but the solid flow of my body into his and his into mine and ours into the body of everything, the solid, flowing, fleshly mass of everything forever. Just for a second, not even a second, except that there is no time, no time or space, just matter, matter forever, matter in love with itself, matter in love with itself eternally, and even when it is over, even though it is over in the very instant of infinity in which it began, I embrace my husband, finally, not in tears, but with a surge of crystal, pristine, perfect faith, thinking:

Come to me, come to me, Arthur. Come to me, all of youâall my darlings. I am Samantha Clementine, and it is going to be all right.

Trust me.

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This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

ISBN: 978-1-5040-2352-8

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